1. Introduction
1.1. Obama speech
1.1.1. Human diversity
1.1.2. External circumstances
1.2. Bush Doctrine
1.2.1. Neocons vs. Liberals
1.2.2. Dishonesty, violence and mistrust
1.2.3. Public cry for revolution
1.3. Political Inversion
1.3.1. Bush Administration created crisis in America
1.3.1.1. War in Iraq
1.3.1.1.1. Under Bush Doctrine, United States imposed democracy on people who didn't ask for it
1.3.1.1.2. Administration misled the public on the need for war through fear of further violence after 9/11
1.3.1.1.3. Cost of war finally added up to American public
1.3.1.2. War in Afghanistan
1.3.1.2.1. Public can justify this war
1.3.1.2.2. Problem is more than a war that can be solved through violent confrontation
1.3.1.2.3. Expensive to fight a second war when we can't afford the first. Afghanistan should have been the only warground.
1.3.1.3. Economic catastrophe at home
1.3.1.3.1. Deregulation allowed banks to mislead public
1.3.1.3.2. Greed on Wall Street
1.3.1.3.3. Poor leadership in American auto industry
1.3.1.3.4. Bailouts
1.3.1.4. Moral Dilemmas
1.3.1.4.1. Bush Administration and neoconservatives pushed agenda that represented values that appeal to a minority of Americans
1.3.1.4.2. People don't want government involvement in morals any more
1.3.1.4.3. Bush Administration pushed a Christian agenda without consideration of alternative viewpoints
1.3.1.4.4. Dishonesty at many levels of the Bush Administration angered the public
1.3.1.4.5. Republican candidate for president reinvented himself for a public that liked him the way he was
1.3.2. Americans voted for change
1.3.2.1. Ivan Illich, Tools for conviviality (Harper & Row, 1980). p. 113 “When controls are weakened, those accustomed to control must seek new allies.”
1.3.2.2. People identify with Obama
1.3.2.2.1. His moral agenda isn't radical
1.3.2.2.2. His political focus is not on morality
1.3.2.2.3. He sees the problems everyone is having
1.3.2.2.4. His messages were clear during campaign
1.3.2.3. Obama has new ideas
1.3.2.3.1. Tools of the previous administration were not convivial
1.3.2.3.2. Obama offers solutions that make sense because they ARE NOT what the previous administration did
1.3.2.3.3. Bush became so untrustworthy because of the mess he left that his dishonesty crippled the Republican party and devalued its agenda
1.3.2.4. Ivan Illich, Tools for conviviality (Harper & Row, 1980). p. 112 “People who invoke the specter of a hopelessly growth-oriented majority seem incapable of envisaging political behavior in a crash. Business ceases to be as usual when the populace loses confidence in industrial productivity, and not just in paper currency.”
1.3.3. Obama used convivial tools
1.3.3.1. Ivan Illich, Tools for conviviality (Harper & Row, 1980). p. 114-115 “But beyond using words to describe the limits as both necessary and appealing, the leadership of these groups must be prepared to use a social tool that is fit to ordain what is good enough for all. It must be a tool which, like language, is respected by all; a tool which, like language, does not lose its power because of the purpose to which it has been put in recent history; a tool which, like language, possesses a fundamental structure that misuse cannot totally corrupt.” Such a tool can only be formal structure of politics and law.
1.3.3.2. Web 2.0 Technology
1.3.3.2.1. Ivan Illich, Tools for conviviality (Harper & Row, 1980). p. 22 “Tools are intrinsic to social relationships. An individual relates himself in action to his society through the use of tools that he actively masters, or by which he is passively acted upon. To the degree that he masters his tools, he can invest the world with his meaning; to the degree that he is mastered by his tools, the shape of the tool determines his own self-image. Convivial tools are those which give each person who uses them the greatest opportunity to enrich the environment with the fruits of his or her vision. Industrial tools deny this possibility to those who use them and they allow their designers to determine the meaning and expectations of others. Most tools today cannot be used in convivial fashion.”
1.3.3.2.2. Current generation uses it
1.3.3.2.3. McCain said he didn't know how to send e-mail
1.3.3.2.4. Accessible tool...convivial
1.3.3.3. Traditional community building tools
1.3.3.3.1. Meetings
1.3.3.3.2. Fundraisers
1.3.3.3.3. Rallies, etc.
1.4. Convivial Reconstruction
1.4.1. People need things and the freedom to obtain them... Ivan Illich, Tools for conviviality (Harper & Row, 1980). p. 12 "A convivial society would be the result of social arrangements that guarantee for each member of the most ample and free access to the tools of the community and limit this freedom only in favor of another member’s equal freedom.”
1.4.2. Ivan Illich, Tools for conviviality (Harper & Row, 1980). p. 15-16 “The present world is divided into those who do not have enough and those who have more than enough, those who are pushed off the road by cars and those who drive them. The have-nots are miserable and the rich anxious to get more. A society whose members know what is enough might be poor, but its members would be equally free. Men with industrially distorted minds cannot grasp the rich texture of personal accomplishments within the range of modern though limited tools. There is no room in their imaginations for the qualitative change that the acceptance of a stable-state industry would mean; a society in which members are free from most of the multiple restraints of schedules and therapies now imposed for the sake of growing tools. Much less do most of our contemporaries experience the sober joy of life in this voluntary though relative poverty which lies within our grasp.”
2. Equality of what?
2.1. Human diversity
2.1.1. Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (W. W. Norton, 2007).
2.1.2. Henry A. Giroux, Stormy Weather: Katrina and the Politics of Disposability (Paradigm Publishers, 2006).
2.1.3. Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (Touchstone, 1986).
2.2. External circumstances
2.2.1. Institutions
2.2.1.1. Samuel E. Wallace, Total Institutions (Transaction Publishers, 1971).
2.2.1.2. Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Vintage, 1995).
2.2.2. Society
2.2.2.1. Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society (Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd, 2000).
2.2.2.2. Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (W. W. Norton, 2007).
2.2.2.3. Henry A. Giroux, Fugitive Cultures: Race, Violence, and Youth, 1st ed. (Routledge, 1996).
2.3. Amartya Sen, Inequality Reexamined (Harvard University Press, 1992).
2.3.1. Two important things to assess: 1) well-being 2) freedom to pursue well-being
2.3.2. Tangible
2.3.2.1. Resources $$$$
2.3.2.1.1. Income
2.3.2.1.2. Property
2.3.2.1.3. Basic needs
2.3.2.2. Transportation
2.3.2.2.1. Vehicle
2.3.2.2.2. Access to vehicle
2.3.2.2.3. Roads, etc.
2.3.2.3. People
2.3.2.3.1. Friends or family
2.3.2.3.2. Supporters
2.3.2.4. Attributes
2.3.2.4.1. Functionings
2.3.2.4.2. Capabilities
2.3.2.4.3. Beauty or stigma
2.3.3. Intangible
2.3.3.1. Education
2.3.3.1.1. Basic skills
2.3.3.1.2. College degree
2.3.3.1.3. Vocational training
2.3.3.1.4. Critical thinking: "street smarts"
2.3.3.1.5. Access to formal education
2.3.3.2. Opportunity
2.3.3.2.1. Employment
2.3.3.2.2. Education
2.3.3.2.3. Access to resources
2.3.3.3. Freedom
2.3.3.3.1. Religion
2.3.3.3.2. Speech
2.3.3.3.3. Protest
2.3.3.3.4. From oppression
2.3.3.4. Values
2.3.3.5. Culture
3. Spaces for equality
3.1. Physical
3.1.1. Institutions
3.1.1.1. Foucault, Discipline & Punish
3.1.1.2. Samuel E. Wallace, Total Institutions (Transaction Publishers, 1971).
3.1.2. Natural Resources
3.1.2.1. B. F. Skinner, Walden Two (Hackett Pub Co Inc, 2005).
3.1.2.2. Henry A. Giroux, Stormy Weather: Katrina and the Politics of Disposability (Paradigm Publishers, 2006).
3.1.3. Infrastructure/Buildings
3.1.3.1. B. F. Skinner, Walden Two (Hackett Pub Co Inc, 2005).
3.1.3.2. Henry A. Giroux, Stormy Weather: Katrina and the Politics of Disposability (Paradigm Publishers, 2006).
3.1.4. Invisible Stigma
3.2. Psychological
3.2.1. Cultural
3.2.2. Religious
3.2.3. Education
3.2.4. Invisible Stigma